AUSTIN, TEXAS – The Austin Museum of Art (AMOA) Downtown presents a pair of exhibitions, America Starts Here:  Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler  and The Paper Sculpture Show  which will be on exhibit until 6 May 2007.  Carrying forward key concepts from past AMOA exhibitions by Andy Goldsworthy and Christo and Jeanne-Claude, both upcoming exhibitions explore how ordinary materials can be transformed in surprising ways to challenge the conventional boundaries which define art, artist, and audience.  During Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler's collaboration, the artist team produced some of the most respected conceptual art projects of the time, including important public commissions, site-specific installations, drawings, and mixed-media sculpture.

Executive Director Dana Friis-Hansen comments, “AMOA is very proud to be presenting this award-winning 1985-1995 survey of the work by Austin artist Mel Ziegler and his artistic partner, the late Kate Ericson.  Their groundbreaking approach to art-making in the public realm emphasizes accessibility, everyday materials, and shared human values, and draws issues and ideas from social activism into the artistic realm.  At a time when Austin as a community is engaged in a broad dialogue about public art and a city-wide cultural plan, we hope that our leaders and neighbors will look to this exhibition for inspiration.  Paper Sculpture  shows how many of their ideas —about participation, permanence, and originality— have been applied and expanded by a new generation of artists, putting many creative processes back into the hands of our visitors.”  

Ericson and Ziegler transformed ordinary materials—books, lumber, house paint, canning jars, tap water, and more—into radical artworks rich with social meaning.  In the mid- to late- 1980s, the couple began to redefine the terms of public art, then widely castigated for its generic-looking artworks.  Other mixed-media works incorporate farmers’ feed and seed bags, jars of baby food, etched architectural stone samples, and some 80 perfumes custom-designed to capture the scents of pies from many regions of the U.S.   

Their work has not been widely recognized, however—many of their strongest pieces were public-art projects, shown outside major urban art centers and dismantled by the artists after the exhibition.  This Exhibition was awarded by The New England Art Critics Association for best Monographic show in a Boston museum.  America Starts Here:  Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler is accompanied by a 216 page catalogue with essays by Bill Arning, Judith Hoos Fox, Kathleen Goncharov, Mary Jane Jacob, Patricia C. Phillips, Lane Relyea, Ned Rifkin, Valerie Smith, and Judith Tannenbaum and is available in the Museum Store.

 

America Starts Here: Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler  was jointly organized by the MIT List Visual Arts Center and the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College.  This exhibition has been generously sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts, a Federal agency, Peter Norton Family Foundation, The Judith Rothschild Foundation (given in recognition of Kate Ericson), and the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation. The Austin presentation is supported by Mr. and Mrs. I. H. Kempner, III.